People Powered Innovation: An Integrated Practice for Faster, Better, Human and Business Outcomes in Complex Social Systems

PROLOGUE

Despite dramatic innovations in technology and the world of physical objects, our results in designing and creating healthy, effective and flourishing human systems, -- work teams, communities, schools, systems of healthcare, corporations, networks, ecosystems and even relations between nations -- have been highly inconsistent. The world is calling for more.

As a response to this call, PPI, an integration of principles and practices from Appreciative Inquiry, Whole Systems and Design Thinking,  is new, still evolving and it works – but it is not a panacea.  I invite you to approach the following material with a curious mind, asking yourself always, “What part of this makes sense to me and how might I use these ideas in my own world?”  If you find at least one good idea for use in your setting, then I will have been successful. If you have ideas for making PPI better, send your ideas to bernard@ppi-labs.com Together we can do what none of us can do alone.

THREE QUESTIONS

1. What is Innovation in Complex Social Systems?

Within complex social systems, such as organizations, networks and business ecosystems Innovation refers to the actual use-in-practice of new and better ways to  create economic prosperity, great places to work, remarkable service, and positive social impact - in other words, better ways to function.  This actual use-in-practice  emphasis alters our focus beyond idea generation to idea execution - no small shift. In a complex social system like a university for example, innovation might well involve re-design of research processes, and/or curriculum, and/or teaching or evaluation methods, and/or faculty assessments,  and/or administrator authorities, and/or institutional strategy, and/or decision making, collaboration and planning processes, and/or supporting technologies - all would be domains for possible innovation within the “whole system”. Innovation, while occasionally involving inventions, is fundamentally about recombining existing resources in ways that are “better” – as seen by core stakeholders, in this case faculty, students, administrators and external constituents.

2. What Makes People Powered Innovation different?

a. Relationships and shared meaning are essential.

Very few (if any) great social innovations are the work of a single person. The complexity of social innovation requires trust, collaboration, a willingness to step into the unknown and enough shared meaning to coordinate collective action. This is what relationships give us. But relationship building must occur during the work of innovation. We do not have the time or resources for “relationship building activities” that are detached from the core work that needs to be done. It is in the “fire” of relationships emerging during the PPI process that new ideas and the energy to move them into daily practice are forged. Meaningful participation in the co-creation of innovations is key. Shared Meaning is also essential. Without shared meaning, (about what is called for, who we are, what is possible) coordination of effort becomes arduous. Without coordinated effort, social system innovation falters and ebbs away.

The multiple high participation modes of engagement for PPI-L (ranging from paired interviews to large group summits to positive change networks to innovation consortia) allow an unlimited number of people to move into new relationships where relational capital is developed and shared meaning is co-constructed. The polyphonic nature of PPI supports this completely. When many (ideally all) voices are engaged in discovering not only what the world is calling for us to become, but also our own deeply held hopes and aspirations, we become known to each other in completely different ways from the normal hub-bub of institutionalized politicized discourse. When we discover the hidden talents so many of us have, the assets and resources which we hardly ever get to use, we realize the vastness of our possibilities for creating a better future.

b. Social system innovation is emergent.

The work of PPI  (Initiate, Inquire, Imagine, Invigorate) is never linear. Rather PPI represents a philosophy of innovation in which we learn as we go and rethink and redo as needed. For example, in traditional research we emphasize the value of asking the same questions of all our subjects. To change the questions midstream would be seen as corrupting the data. PPI sees the world as fundamentally emergent; a continuous flow of conversations which are socially constructing our future. In this context, we shift the early Inquiry questions as we become more clear on their ability to help us learn about (and in so doing co-construct) the world to which we aspire. When we dream in the PPI process about the kind of system future we hope for, we often see the need for additional Inquiry and so we go back. When we design the detail of the innovations which will bring our imaginations alive, we often find ourselves re-imagining…and so on. The essence of PPI is flexibility in embracing emergence. PPI activities and processes have been developed to support both flexibility in practices, structures and systems as building blocks for preferred futures and in the process of generating innovations in these areas.

c. Vision and transition plans are necessary but insufficient ingredients

Common wisdom suggests that for human systems to grow and evolve, compelling/shared visions of a desired future and good plans for how to get from here to there are necessary. Without these two highly powerful ingredients, innovation becomes more difficult – so they are part of the PPI process. However, this perspective misses a core ingredient, namely continuity. This basic human need, to be able to take the best of who we are with us into the future, is core to diffusing the bulk of resistance to social system innovation – whether in a team, an organization, a network, or in an ecosystem.

The Inquiry phase of PPI  incorporates a continuity search. This is a search for those few values or practices that give life to our system; that small set of core factors which are seen as integral to who we are. In the discovery work at a large pharmaceutical research institution, the core life-giving factor, that which if we didn’t retain it would lead to our demise, was described as a commitment to good science. It was not the salaries, the dining facilities, the campus, or the state of the art facilities. It was the lack of pressure to fudge results; it was the readiness to entertain promising, albeit moonshot, research directions if well-reasoned. In short, the shared value of good science, when identified and elevated as the institution’s most important thing to continue while everything else might change, was the single most critical intervention for reducing resistance to innovation.

3. What is the Work of the PPI process?

With its work of Inquiry, PPI supports the creation of greater understanding (both qualitatively and quantitatively ) of the world we are in as context for our innovation work; PPI invites discovery of opportunities, breakthroughs and best practices both outside our social system and within it.

The work in the Imagine phase involves both the creation of a shared vision of our preferred future; and the work of design to develop clarity about the practical details of what we will innovate and how to bring our vision to life;

And finally the work of Invigorate develops agility as we build our capacity for learning and improving by doing. In this phase, we focus on continued re-designing in recognition that the complex interactions of stakeholders, tasks, processes, and external shifts can confound our best laid plans.  PPI proposes an implementation sequence of start small, review and adjust, grow bigger, review, incorporate new realities, modify, grow more and so on – a “learn your way into the future” strategy. It is this dynamic way of implementing that tills the soil and waters the plants of system agility – by walking the talk of being flexible, of collaborating to move forward, of continually asking, “What’s working well and why?”, “What new realities and possibilities are emerging?”, “What new strengths, assets, and capacities are we uncovering?” and, “Where do we want to go now?”

Additional Resources

Essentials of Appreciative Inquiry:Roadmap for Positive Change – Bernard Mohr

IDEA: A Collaborative Organization Design Process Integrating Innovation, Design, Engagement and Action –  Don de Guerre.

People Powered Innovation for the Academy – Bernard Mohr

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